The World Bridge Federation for many years organized junior programs around the world. When they had a camp in Poland, the following deal came from the nightly duplicate event there. Nick Brink, who was on his way to Rio to play for the Dutch Juniors in the World Championships, found an ingenious way to squeeze blood from a stone on the following deal. He needed some co-operation from the defenders, but isn’t that only right and proper?

Nick received the lead of the heart ace and a diamond shift, which he won in hand. If diamonds were not splitting, spades were likely to be 3-2, so he drew two rounds of trumps and cashed the heart king to pitch a club from dummy. Then he played the top clubs and exited with a third club to West as East pitched a heart.

Now, while any card West played would give a ruff-and-discard, his next move was critical. The winning defense is to play a club rather than a heart, so East would be able to pitch a diamond. In fact, West exited with a heart and Nick ruffed, pitching a diamond from dummy. He then got out with his last trump to East. That player had only diamonds left; he had to lead into the tenace in dummy and concede the rest.

As you can see, if West plays a club, declarer can again ruff in hand and lead a trump to East. But that player can exit with his last heart, forcing declarer to ruff in dummy and concede a diamond to East at the end.

There are some plays that only experts would consider, and some that they would make only against another expert. Consider this example, from a U.S. Nationals at New Orleans.

Brian Glubok as West eschewed the opening lead of a top club, realizing he would never be able to give his partner a club ruff. East, Michael Radin, was implicitly marked with some club length, since he had neither made a negative double nor responded one no-trump. So he tried a low diamond. Peter Nagy, as declarer, cashed the top diamonds and played a low heart from dummy to Glubok’s jack.

Glubok deviously played a low club now — and Nagy called for dummy’s queen! Now declarer could ruff a heart to hand and take a spade finesse for his contract. Had he guessed incorrectly, the defenders would have cashed three clubs and set the hand. So why did he follow this line?

Declarer knew that Radin had raised to two diamonds on minimal values and four-card support, so Glubok had a minimum balanced hand. Since Glubok might have led a heart from an original ace-king-jack combination, Radin appeared to have one top heart, in which case, West had the rest of the deck.

More important, if Glubok had an ace-jack or king-jack combination in clubs, he would have shifted to the jack, protecting against his partner having the club ace, with or without the club 10. With those holdings and the queen in dummy, the play of the jack would virtually never cost a trick.

Against four spades, the heart five was led to East’s jack, South correctly following with the three. This left open the possibility that West had led from a four- or three-card holding, since East-West were playing third-and-fifth leads in partnership suits.

With dummy’s long suit menacing, East shifted immediately to the club jack. South covered with the king, the card he was known to hold from East’s perspective, after West’s failure to lead a top club. West won his ace and reverted to hearts.

East now knew West had a doubleton heart, but what would be the purpose of continuing the suit? The defenders’ best chance might have been to cash a second club trick, but East saw that if West had held the club queen, he would have taken it before playing a second heart.

At any rate, with the bad spade split, there was a good chance the setting trick would come from the trump suit, as long as declarer could not pick it up. So East forced dummy with a third heart. If West had had queen-fourth of spades, this would have beaten the game legitimately, but even here it made declarer’s task next to impossible.

To bring home his game, South would have needed to take a first-round finesse of the spade 10, but he cashed the spade king and went down. He would have had a similar problem if West had been dealt queen-third in spades. Of course, after a club continuation at trick three, declarer would have cashed the spade ace, revealing the 4-0 split.

On today’s deal, an intermediate jump overcall propelled North-South to a pushy game, when a more normal one-level bid might have seen them subside in part-score.

East’s jump overcall systematically suggested 8-12. South doubled, then upgraded his spade stopper and quick tricks in the side suits to take a shot at three no-trump. East let the spade queen lead run around to declarer, who took his king, since it would have been unwise to duck with the hearts exposed. Declarer next cashed the diamond king, under which East dropped a tricky queen! The 10, if read as a true card, might have persuaded declarer to guess the suit. This way, East thought that declarer was likely to finesse the diamond nine on the second round if he had a doubleton diamond.

Instead of taking East’s card at face value and immediately finessing the diamond nine, South next played three rounds of clubs, ending in hand, with East pitching a heart on the third. Declarer then played a diamond to the ace and scored up his vulnerable game.

Why did he do this? He knew East had six spades and two clubs, leaving five red-suit cards. Many players would have hesitated to pre-empt in spades with a fair four-card heart suit instead of making a simple overcall. So, declarer deduced East’s 6=3=2=2 shape.

Incidentally, East might have considered putting up the spade ace at trick one, then shifting to the heart nine, playing his partner for king-jack-eight-low.